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Stretchy strings make ‘fuzzy’ black hole give up its secrets

By Stephen Battersby

BLACK holes may be filled to the brim with giant strings and vibrating membranes. The idea contradicts the conventional view of black holes, which says that all the matter inside is crammed into an infinitely dense point. And by providing a way for black holes to send out information about their contents, it could resolve a profound paradox in physics.

Samir Mathur and his colleagues at Ohio State University in Columbus were investigating a puzzle called the black-hole information paradox. The gist is that the theory of quantum mechanics says information must be preserved – it cannot …